1100 | Psychoanalytic Jurisprudence

This course introduces students to the psychoanalytic method of reading law. Psychoanalysis, which has witnessed a vast interdisciplinary proliferation over the years, has tremendous potential as a way of reading law.

This course deals with (a) using psychoanalysis as a critical and methodological discourse to read law closely, beyond and through the black letter of the legal text and (b) unpacking the methods by which to read symptoms, signs, and tensions within legal texts and judicial decisions.

This course will demand intensive and rigorous reading and writing. It will offer students the opportunity to closely read and engage with four kinds of texts: (a) primary material from the genre of clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis; (b) secondary material on the literary and humanistic dimensions of psychoanalysis; (c) Material on psychoanalytic legal theory; and (d) Re-reading constitutional/juridical discourse in India from a psychoanalytic lens.

This course will take the form of lectures and discussions. Each session will be devoted to a particular topic or set of topics. Readings are assigned for each session and reading the texts beforehand is mandatory. Some weeks also have recommended texts, films and documentaries which are not mandatory, albeit they are highly useful for the topic and worth the effort.